


teardrops

by xigithy



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-21
Updated: 2019-06-21
Packaged: 2020-05-15 14:31:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19297672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xigithy/pseuds/xigithy
Summary: "Always told you they'd stop you from crying. The upside-down tears."





	teardrops

Everything hurts.

Not in the usual ‘this place is the worst, these people are terrible, I hate every minute of this’ way that Lea usually complains about, but in the ‘I just went half a round sparring with Aeleus and got absolutely destroyed, now my entire body feels like one big bruise’ sort of way that’s becoming unfortunately common the more time he spends in the Organization.

Shifting slowly into a less uncomfortable position on the stark white mattress in the room he’d been given to call his own, Lea rubs a hand down his face- and hisses at the sharp pain that shoots through him as long, newly-calloused fingers skim by the fresh bruise forming on his cheek. Had that been from the large man’s elbow connecting with his face during the mock battle? Or had it come from his fall to the ground, where his face had unceremoniously kissed the dirt with all the grace of a rock falling from a very great height? It doesn’t matter, he supposes bitterly, hurts like a bitch either way. Gingerly, Lea draws his lanky legs to his chest, wincing at the ache that cries from deep within his muscles to _stop, please_ , and rests his head on his knees with a deep sigh.

The training hadn’t been going as well as anyone hoped.

Ansem- **_Xemnas_ ** , he has to keep reminding himself- thought Lea showed promise when he and Isa had started out as apprentices. He’d thought Lea- scrawny teen that he is- could grow to become a great asset to the Organization and had thusly assigned him to train with the other members of the guard. Fat lotta good that had done; so far, all he has to show for it is a smattering of bruises that never seem to go away, an ache that permeates his very soul, and the persistent, lingering feeling that he just doesn’t _belong_ here.

Isa was having a much easier time with the whole ordeal. At least, he assumes so… How long has it been now, since he last saw Isa? A week? Verging on two? Lea’s tried his best to carve out some time for them to hang out- like before- but… well, whatever the Organization’s been keeping him busy with, Isa never has time for _him_ anymore.

The unfortunate realization of their situation is enough to make the tears well up in his eyes and Lea reaches the back of a hand up to swipe them away before they can spill over entirely, forgetting for a moment the still very tender bruise at his cheekbone. He cries out in frustration, cursing aloud at- he’s not even sure, entirely. But in the same breath, the anger of the growl softens into a whimper, which slowly, gently, melts into a body shaking sob.

And like a dam whose cracks finally split and flood water unto the earth, so too do the tears flow freely from Lea, rolling hot and fast down his cheeks and onto the dark denim of his pants. He lets the grief wash over him, squeezing his eyes shut as the sobs take him, and wishing with all his heart that he was back home. _But we don’t_ **_have_ ** _hearts_ , the thought passes with an astounding clarity through his mind, _so can something wished with all your heart even_ **_mean_ ** _anything? Can a hollow wish of a shell of a person even_ **_be_ ** _realized?_

“...I can hear you sniveling from outside.”

“I’m **_not_ ** sniveling.” The indignance in his voice is automatic; practiced from years of quipping back at Isa’s friendly, teasing barbs. Lea sniffs pathetically, again running a hand across his face to smear away tears. A beat passes as the reflex of the encounter subsides, and Lea realizes who he’s speaking to. Like a switch, Lea’s face lights up, and all the pain and gloom hanging over him dissipates into sheer elation at the sight of his best friend. “Isa!”

“ _Saïx_ ,” the other boy corrects him sharply, exasperation already deeply ingrained in his voice as he enters the room fully and shuts the door behind him. “Don’t have it memorized yet, hmm?”

“I-” A pout settles onto Lea’s face and he drops his gaze to a spot on the floor, glaring at it like it might actually wither should he stare hard enough. “...is _knocking_ something nobodies don’t do? Or did you just _forget_ how when you lost your heart?”

Isa chuckles once, devoid of it’s usual dry humor- placating in that new, fun way that drives Lea up a wall. “I never needed to knock _before_ , why do you expect I’d start now?”

He approaches the bed, footsteps soft and near silent on the ground, and against his better judgment, Lea tears his eyes from the floor to look up at Isa- to really look at him. He seems taller somehow, since the last time Lea saw him, broader even. Like the entire line of work agrees with him. _It figures_ , Lea thinks, _that Isa would flourish here_. The rigidity of the Organization, the heartless demeanor with which everyone around here exists- it all seems much better suited to the cool composition of his best friend than his own fiery, carefree one.

“Yeah, well…” Lea reaches a hand back to scratch awkwardly at the back of his head. “Things’ve changed. Figured maybe _Vexen_ was giving you _etiquette_ lessons or something in that lab of his.”

At that Isa laughs, soft and breathy, but with enough genuine emotion behind it that Lea can feel his not-heart skip a beat at the sound. It’s like a deep breath of fresh air after _months_ of drowning, and as Isa takes a gentle seat at the foot of his bed, Lea feels his stomach twist up that good-anxious way it used to back when they both had hearts. Hesitantly, Lea untangles himself from around his own limbs and climbs across the bed to sit closer to the other boy, taking Isa’s cold hand in his own warm one and, for a brief moment, relishing in the soothing, familiar contact.

It’s a short-lived comfort, as Isa pulls his hand away nearly instantaneously, and clenches it into a loose fist on his lap. For an eternity, the two sit in a sort of sullen silence- Isa staring at the fist in his lap like it belongs to anybody but him, and Lea staring at Isa with a pleading longing that shakes him to his core.

“You should hear what they’re saying about you.” Isa’s murmured statement is off, somehow- _embarrassed_ , in a way that rubs off on Lea, who averts his eyes with a dramatic slumping of his shoulders.

“ _Great_ , that’s what I wanna hear.” Lea leans back onto an arm and gesticulates wildly with the other. “‘Hey Lea, you know how you’re worried everyone’s always secretly talking about what a _screw up_ you are behind your back? Well, it turns out, they actually _are_.’ Thanks for that **Saïx** ; glad you came all this way to deliver that news to me _personally_.”

“That’s not…” Isa takes a deep breath through his nose, unclenching his fist to smooth an imaginary wrinkle from his pants as he chooses his next words. “The illusion of you retaining your emotions is an occasional topic of conversation amongst some of the founding members. They think it’s… _curious_ that you should still act the way you do when you don’t have a heart to spur the emotion.”

“Well, _sor-ry_ for not acting like I don’t still have emotions.”

“You _know_ that’s not the case.” He sighs, and with the forceful exhale comes a hint of the agitation that Lea can tell he’s trying to suppress. “They explained it very simply to us: the memories of your feelings are still fresh in your mind, so they still _feel_ real. What you’re feeling is the echo of something that no longer exists.”

Again, the two fall into an uncomfortable silence, and Lea can’t help but dwell on how _wrong_ the whole thing is. There was a time when the two of them could sit forever in comfortable silence (or, at least as long as he could stand to go without speaking), but every second that passes now without a word between them feels like days. It’s _suffocating_ , to feel light-years apart from someone sitting mere inches from you and, before he can really stop it, Lea is blinking forth more fat, hot tears.

“ _Fuck_.” Swearing under his breath, Lea presses the heels of his hands into his eyes and flops back against the mattress. It’s just not **_fair_**. How can he be without a heart and still _feel_ so much? How can Isa just sit there and deny that he’s feeling _anything_?

“I- That’s… that’s actually why I came to see you today.”

Isa’s quiet voice cuts through his inner torment and after another pregnant pause, Lea can hear the shifting of fabric on fabric, feel the slight jostle of the bed as Isa readjusts, and tentatively, he lifts his hands from his reddened face to look curiously at the other boy. Isa’s facing him more fully, legs crossed on the bed, with a book that Lea hadn’t noticed Isa bring in with him lying open across his lap. Pushing himself up, Lea mirrors the pose and sits cross-legged across from Isa, sniffling as his eyes scan from the words on the page up to Isa’s face. The other boy has his gaze trained on the book, staring at it hard and unblinking, and Lea can tell Isa is deliberately avoiding locking eyes with him.

“There’s-” Isa hesitates, frowning softly, before looking up at Lea, emerald eyes locking finally with his own. There’s a spark of something genuine in Isa’s eyes that betray his cold and distant demeanor- a spark of _his_ Isa- that leaves Lea hanging on to his every word as he continues. “I found a spell- in one of the books in the lab. It should… I- It should help you.”

“Help.” Lea echoes the word almost languidly, cocking his head as he repeats it.

“With the crying,” Isa retorts matter-of-factly, reaching into his cloak to pull out what appears to be a purple permanent marker. “We need to be _strong_ if we’re going to do this- if we’re going to find her.”

Isa reaches his free hand out to Lea, hovering just above the boy’s knobby knee, before patting it once, encouragingly. It lingers there, probably longer than Isa means, and in that moment, Lea feels transported back to his bedroom in Radiant Garden- where the two would spend hours upon hours scheming for ways to get into the castle, dreaming up ways to rescue their mystery friend in the dungeons. That had been the only reason Lea had agreed to this- to apprenticing to Ansem the Wise, and later, becoming a nobody. It had all been for _her_. Isa’s touch on Lea’s leg says so many things in that instant, but above them all, it says something Lea’s told himself every day he’s wanted to quit since their apprenticeship started: _we’re the only ones still looking for her, we can’t just give up now_.

“...yeah,” Lea finally agrees with an affirmative nod. “Okay, do it.”

Before Lea can totally finish speaking, Isa’s on the move: pulling his hand from atop the other boy’s knee and uncapping the marker. He wiggles incrementally closer to Lea and takes the redhead’s chin in his hand, holding it steady as Isa presses the felt tip of the marker to the skin beneath Lea’s eyes and carefully draws something upon either side.

“What’re you-”

“ _Shh_.” Isa hushes him, stern in that soothing tone he usually chides Lea in, and the other boy obliges, practically melting further into his touch at the sound. “Upside-down teardrops,” he explains, leaning forward just slightly to blow a gentle stream of air on the wet ink. “They’ll stop you from crying.”

Lea wants to ask how ink on skin is _possibly_ supposed to stem his constant tide of emotions, but as usual, Isa is three steps ahead of him. Capping the marker and setting it aside, he brings the leather bound book up between them and begins to read an incantation off of the pages, haltingly at first. The words aren’t any language Lea knows, and by the way Isa’s mouth struggles to form out the foreign sounds, it’s not one he’s familiar with either. Brow furrowed, Isa reaches out to touch the markings under Lea’s eyes and, as his fingertips brush the ink, one after the other, the connection of their skin sends a static shock through Lea at each point of contact.

“There.” Isa leans back, shutting the book with a satisfied _hmph_.

“...That’s it?” Lea gingerly touches the marks under his eyes, rubbing at them briefly, before pulling his finger away to inspect for any ink transfer and finding none. “How d’you know if it worked or not?”

“It worked.”

“But how do you _know_?”

“I just **do** .” The exasperation is back in the other boy’s voice, and to the untrained ear, it would appear that Isa- Saïx- is growing irritated with the line of questioning. But Lea _knows_ him- knows every facet of Isa’s personality, every nuance and inflection of his voice, and he can tell: in this brief, shining moment, things are just like they used to be.

Maybe the spell didn’t actually work, maybe it did. All Lea can say for sure is that _Isa_ believes in it; and if Isa believes, it’s enough for him. Besides, there would be plenty of time to test the spell out later.

“...Thanks, Isa.”

For the first time in forever, Isa doesn’t correct him. He only nods in acknowledgment as he begins to collect his things and pushes himself off the bed. Lea wants to reach out for him, plead with him to stay- just five more minutes- but he has enough sense to leave well enough alone.

“I’m expected back in the lab. Vexen will have noticed by now that I’ve gone missing.” Isa starts to the door, pausing as his hand reaches out to grab the handle. “...Don’t let Lexaeus rough you up too much, alright?”

“Yeah.” Lea grins at the other boy suddenly, flopping back against the mattress with a cockiness that he hasn’t felt in weeks. “...see you, Isa.”

The other boy only breathes a laugh, shaking his head, and as he pulls the door open and crosses the threshold, Lea can hear the reply- spoken softly, but clear as day.

“...see you, Lea. ”

**Author's Note:**

> written for #8daysofaxel on twitter/tumblr, a fulfillment of day 2: teardrops!
> 
> this was something I wanted to write for a while so thanks for the opportunity to force myself to get it out! <3


End file.
